Driftmetal (10 page)

I began to move past Andrew toward the elevators. He
had been scribbling on his clipboard as I talked.

“Uh, sir… Hal. Mr. Nordstrom,” said Andrew,
following me. “Where did you say home was?”

I hesitated. “Bannock. Little island that keeps a
low altitude, a distance downstream from here.”

“Ah, yes. I know the place,” Andrew said,
scribbling.

“You’ve been there?” I said with excitement. “Oh,
splendid. Quaint little drift-town, Bannock, isn’t it? Lovely all
the time.” When I turned around, Vilaris was giving me his dirtiest
look yet as he dug a hand into his pocket.

“No, I’ve never been,” said Andrew. “I only know it
by name. And what do you do for a living there in Bannock, Mr.
Nordstrom?”

“I’m in the business of moving things from one place
to another, Andrew, my boy. I take them where they need to go, and
the people who own them reward me for having done so. Tell you more
about it next time, ‘ey ol’ buddy? Now, will you still be down here
about three hours from now?”

“My shift ends at eight o’clock,” said Andrew.

“Very good,” I said. “We might even run into one
another again before the day’s out.”

“We may well,” said Andrew. “Now if you please, may
I have this gentleman’s name and information as well?”

“Lincoln Putch,” I said. “One of my investors.
Terrible fellow, really. If I were you, I’d lock him up for no
other reason than the dour looks he’ll give a man from time to
time. See, there’s one of them now. Good thing these decisions
aren’t up to me, I dare say. Best leave that to the professionals,
eh? For you and your like, Andrew, there is no end to my
admiration.”

Vilaris handed Andrew a small fold of chips, which
he accepted with a nod of thanks.

“Now then,” I said. “Which elevator is ours?”

Andrew smiled. “Right this way, Mr. Nordstrom.”

 When the doors slid shut and the ground began
to pull away from us, a wave of relief washed over me.
We made
it into the city
, I thought.
Next comes the hard part
.
The blue lights flitted by as we shot upward, reflected in the
elevator’s plate glass windows. Spots of yellow-orange flame
smoldered in the valley below, torches and campfires underscored by
the growing dusk. The airships that had been so large when we stood
next to them became no larger than toys; the people, no larger than
bugs. Vilaris and I were alone in a box of glass and metal large
enough for twenty people.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“I was just being honest. You
are
a wealthy
son of a gun.”

“No, I mean all that nonsense about why we’re
here.”

“Did you want him asking detailed questions about
what we’re
really
doing?”

“What does it matter? We’re finding a streamboat and
a crew. That’s not illegal.”

“Okay, so three primies from a secret city are here
to find a ship and fill it with sailors, steal back the gravstone
their former business associate walked away with, sign trade
contracts with a dozen new buyers—trade contracts for the most
valuable element in the world, mind you—and return home without
leaving behind a trace of their existence. Is that what you wanted
me to say?”

“I didn’t say that. But you didn’t have to embellish
your story so much.”

“Let me tell you something, Clint. Those customs
officers aren’t just there to make sure everyone’s following the
rules. They’re there for a piece of any good action they manage to
uncover. You think they don’t take bribes? Think they don’t report
suspicious activity at the drop of a hat? It doesn’t matter if
we’re breaking zero laws or a hundred of them; they can throw you
in the hothouse because they don’t like the way you smell.”

Vilaris tossed up a hand, defeated. “Alright. What
do I know? It was a little over the top, that’s all I’m saying. But
I guess it worked.”

The elevator halted a few stories from the top of
the cliffs, and the operators cranked the doors open. Instead of
the city, we stepped out into a damp gray cave with harsh white
bulbs flickering along the ceiling. Four customs officers in dark
green uniforms were standing on the other side of the doors as if
they’d been waiting for us, solemn and stern-faced, golden badges
glinting in the cold light.

“Just this way, please,” said the first of them, a
broad-shouldered man with a shock of blond hair showing beneath his
crisp green cover.

Vilaris and I followed. The other officers didn’t
move until after we’d passed them. I noted their sidearms, black
snub-nosed revolvers, probably loaded with pulser rounds. The floor
of the cave was smooth and flat, the walls rough and curvaceous.
They led us down the arched hallway and we turned right into a side
corridor. When two more officers appeared outside the doorway of
the small windowless room ahead of us, I knew something was wrong.
I’d guessed it as soon as we left the elevator, but now I knew. I
kept up the act nonetheless.

“Eh, excuse me, officer. We’re meant to be headed
into the city. Where are you taking us, exactly?”

Heedless of my words, the officer swept an arm
toward the doorway. “Just through here, gentlemen.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Excuse me, I said. I demand
to be told where you’re taking us.”

I heard hands brush against holsters behind me.

“Mulroney Jakes, we’re placing you under arrest.
You’re to remain here until the authorities arrive.”

Andrew Partridge, you sly rascal. Sold us down
the river without a hint of betrayal in your eyes, and I didn’t
even catch on. Heavens forbid I ever come back to town to find
you…
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’m turning myself
in.”

6

I stuck my hands in the air and turned to face
Vilaris. “Elevator. Run.”

Vilaris was confused. “Huh?”

I didn’t have time to spell it out for him. I shoved
him aside and put a dart into each of the three officers’ chests
before they’d unsnapped their holster straps. Without turning
around, I pulled my flecker pistol from inside my jacket and shot
the blond-haired officer in his big meaty head. “Run. Dangit
Vilaris, run!”

The two officers in the doorway had drawn and
started firing before Vilaris and I were halfway down the side
corridor. I watched the pulser rounds explode around Vilaris and
make the hair stand up on the back of his neck, but he managed to
avoid taking any direct hits. Not that pulser rounds would’ve had
much effect on primie flesh.

When the first pulser round hit
me
, on the
other hand, it felt like someone had wrapped me in electrical wire
and stuck me in a toaster. My bones lit up like fluorescent bulbs,
and my skin crawled with those little robotic spiders that have
sewing needles for legs. Two more rounds hit me while I was still
in the process of collapsing, igniting my body in their
electromagnetic agony.

Vilaris heard me fall and came back. He came back
for me. Lifted me, dragged me to my feet and carried me, firing
flecker rounds over his shoulder while we charged down the hallway.
Someone hit the alarm as we rounded the corner. A siren wailed,
loud and long and keening. The elevator lay ahead, our gate to
freedom.

I hurt. All over. It’s just like the cops to put you
in the worst possible pain you could be in without doing any real
damage. I’d been hit with pulsers before, mind you. The miner’s
thugs had used them on me earlier in the same night I escaped from
the hovercell. That hadn’t been my first time getting pulsed, but
gouge my eye out with a rusty fork if it hadn’t hurt more than the
time before.

It was the worst feeling in the world, getting
pulsed. Worse than getting crackled. It felt like your body was in
the process of being melted down for scrap. Knowing you’d be back
to normal in an hour or two didn’t make it any better. At least a
flecker knew how to sear the flesh off your bones. At least a laser
could burn a real hole in you. A pulser was little more than a
hallucination of pain—the most powerful hallucination I’d ever
undergone, including the ones I’d undergone by choice.

“Hold on, Mull. Not too much farther,” Vilaris was
saying.

Somehow my augmented eye had zoomed itself all the
way in, and my unenhanced eye was trembling like a coin on a train
track. Trying to see anything felt approximately as effective as
using a snow globe to look through a kaleidoscope with the lights
out. The sound of footsteps echoed around us, and Vilaris was
dragging me into the elevator and trying to figure out how to get
us to the bottom. I leaned into the glass, my head swimming and my
legs wobbling like jelly. The doors slipped shut as customs
officers raced down the hall after us. Then we were descending, and
I was putting my back to the window and reaching for Vilaris.

“I promise that after tonight, I will try not to ask
you to do this ever again,” I said. “Hug me.”

Vilaris gave me his usual look of bewilderment.

“Come here and wrap those big sexy arms around me,
Vilaris, curse you. I don’t have time for your games.” I leaned
hard against the window and planted the bottom of my foot against
the glass.

Vilaris took a step toward me.

I yanked him in close, whispered in his ear.
“Pretend it didn’t happen this way.”

My heel port
snicked
open. The solenoid
jackhammered the window, and an instant later we were floating
downward on a bed of crystalline shards. I felt the grappler chomp
into the elevator ceiling and let the winch loose, Vilaris’s
startled screams and desperate, scrabbling arms worrying over my
pained body.

He held on, heavens help him. Held on until I
squeezed the winch tight and set us down like a couple of
butterflies landing on a flower. Butterflies with rocks strapped to
their ankles, landing on a flower made of the ground.

The winch was screeching inside my arm by the time
we slammed down. Friction smoke was pouring from the wrist port as
I ejected the wire and freed myself from Vilaris’s bear hug. I
could hear the alarm ringing faintly through the open elevator
shaft far above.

A group of customs officers came toward us. Vilaris
pulled me into the crowd. Whatever they called those tunnels and
dark rooms where they brought people who didn’t pass muster,
neither of us wanted to wait around and find out. We were shuffling
through a crush of bodies, ducking around baggage trains and
pallets of building materials and carts full of wilting produce.
Then we were in the airfield, darting through the maze of ships and
campsites. My legs still felt like jelly and my head was pounding.
It was only Vilaris’s constant guidance that got me back to
The
Secant’s Clarity
without curling up into the fetal position and
crying alone in the dark.

“No way we’re going up in this thing again,” I said
as we entered the control capsule through the gash in the
Clarity
’s hull. “We have to find another ship.”

“That’s what we just got back from failing to do,
isn’t it?”

I draped myself over the pilot’s chair, my body
still throbbing like a sore thumb. “What we
tried
to do was
buy a streamboat in good condition from a rich person who took good
care of it. What we’re down to now is finding any ship that flies,
and getting off Mallentis before the cops find us.”

“I’ll start looking.” Vilaris moved toward the exit,
but I stopped him.

“Where are Chaz and Blaylocke?”

“Crew cabin, maybe? Or aft, keeping the furnace
going?”

“Never mind,” I said. “You go. I’ll find them, as
soon as I can stand up without my knees clacking together like cold
teeth.”

I sat alone, watching traces of firelight dance on
the window panes, a cool nighttime breeze blowing in through the
gash. My legs were splayed out, my arms hanging over the armrests,
my back and neck both as stiff as a winter frost. No position I
tried sitting in was comfortable.

After a little while, I stood and stretched. It felt
like my whole body had a headache. A veil of malaise descended over
me as I passed through the cabins in search of Chaz and Blaylocke.
I found them both sound asleep in the crew cabin. The remote that
controlled my sub-signal crackler had slipped from Blaylocke’s
dangling hand and was resting on the ground next to his bunk. I
snatched it up without a second’s hesitation and shoved it into my
pocket.

I was free. It took me a moment to come to grips
with it. I had the remote; it was mine now, and I could walk away.
I could abandon this
fool’s errand
—Blaylocke’s words, not
mine—and return to what was important: getting my
Ostelle
back. Getting revenge on the parents who’d sold me to the Civs.

Once I had my boat back, I’d throw every last one of
those stinking traitors overboard. I could already feel the smooth
spokes of her wheel in my hands, feel her deck tremble beneath my
feet as the turbines thundered. I could see her skimming across the
sky, cutting a knife-line path along a misty yellow morning. I
wanted to be there, walking through the clouds. I wanted to shut
off the engines and let her glide, let the stream carry us away to
anywhere.

No more thinking about it
, I told myself.
I’m going
.

I moved for the door, but when I got there, I found
I couldn’t go any further. It wasn’t because there was some force
field blocking me. Not a physical one, anyway. It was because
somewhere, down in the dirty black depths of my soul, a hint of
morality was piercing the darkness like an ooey-gooey,
compassionate beam of light.
If I leave, I’ll be putting an
entire city full of people in jeopardy. A city that might be the
only true lasting remnant of the species I evolved from.
Humans—humans like they were meant to be
.